Windows 8 : User Accounts (part 2) - Making the Most of a Domain or Local Account

2. Making the Most of a Domain or Local Account

If you are signing in to a PC with a
domain or local account, there are some changes you can make to provide
you with the best possible experience. Which you do will depend
somewhat on whether you’re currently signing in to Windows 8 with a
local account or a domain account. These changes include:

You cannot do this with a domain account. Only a local account can be switched to a Microsoft account.

Switch a local account to a Microsoft account:
If you opted out of the Microsoft account sign-in when you first set up
Windows 8, perhaps because you were confused by this new account type
and simply wanted things to be as close as possible to the way it was
in Windows 7, Microsoft actually lets you change your local account
after the fact and switch it to a Microsoft account.

To make this change, navigate to PC Settings
and then Users. Then, under Your account, click the Switch to a
Microsoft account button, as shown in Figure 1. Voila! Problem solved.

You can also use this same interface to
switch from a Microsoft account to a local account. And no, we can’t
think of a single reason why you’d want to do this.

Figure 1: You can convert your local account to a Microsoft account at any time.

Connecta domain account to a Microsoft account: If you’re using a domain account, you can’t switch it to a Microsoft account. But you can
link your domain sign-in with your Microsoft account, achieving the
same benefits as you’d get by simply signing in with a Microsoft
account. In the business, this is what we call a “best of both worlds”
solution.

To do so, navigate to PC Settings and then
Users. Under Your account, click the Connect your Microsoft account
button. When you do, the screen shown in Figure 2 appears. Here, you choose which PC settings you’d like to sync with your domain account.

Figure 2: You can connect a domain account to a Microsoft account and even choose which settings to sync.

After choosing which settings to sync, you
will sign in to your Microsoft account and confirm or enter your
security verification information, just as you do when you sign in with
this type of account normally. And from now on, you can use Microsoft’s
account services—and the bundled apps in Windows 8 that take advantage
of them—seamlessly, without needing to sign in with each app. Actually,
it’s even better than that: Some apps simply won’t work unless you sign
in with a Microsoft account. This linking process makes them work.

Why This May Not Work

Okay, there’s a huge gotcha to this
scheme. (You had to sort of expect there was going to be one.) It goes
like this: Your domain administrators simply may not allow it. Whether
they do will depend on a number of factors, but it all boils down to
whether your environment is highly controlled. So all you can do is try
and hope for the best.

Sign in to app groups with a Microsoft account: There
is a third approach, one that provides a more limited way to access
some Microsoft account goodness, but without changing your domain or
local account in any way. That is, instead of linking or switching your
existing sign-in account, you can simply try to run one of the
connected apps in Windows 8 and then sign in when prompted by a screen
that will resemble Figure 3.

Figure 3: If you can’t or won’t use a Microsoft account, you can instead sign in to various app groups.

This approach isn’t as sophisticated
as using (or linking) a Microsoft account. You’ll need to sign in a few
different times, to different app groups—Microsoft considers the
productivity (or what it calls “communications”) apps to be one group,
for example, and the Xbox (media and games) apps to be a separate
group. And you don’t get the PC-to-PC settings sync functionality
that’s available with a real Microsoft account sign-in. But if you
don’t have a choice—or are just really, really stubborn—this will at
least let you use the built-in Metro apps to their fullest.